Oooh ahhh I love a good festy. Why settle for seeing The Foo Fighters, The National and The Living End for a 40th time, though? If you’re in Auckland City this December, go take a peek at Zac Arnold’s NZ PSYCH FEST. It’s on December 4th-5th at Golden Dawn and Whammy. Grip some tickets here. It’s only $15 pre-sales, come on!

This is a pretty huckery Youtube clip, but hey here we are. Swampy and evil enough to warrant the name ‘Evil Ocean’, ticks the boxes.

MC NUGGET by Greenfog
“This song is 7 mins+”. Listen, I don’t have all day mate. Normally, that’s how it goes. In this case, it’s right up my alley. Low and slow psych that’s juuust on the right side of a bongwater infused mudslide into prog.

I can’t find NIISA online… Fuck! Ah well, you better go to the show I suppose.

HAMLET by Opposite Sex
Sounds a bit like a band from Dunedin. Here’s the twist – this band is from Dunedin. Seems scary! The rest of their bandcamp material is a bit different, I’m soaking in it at the moment.

A while back, I posted a compilation record from Tokyo label Guruguru Brain. Lucky for me, when I got amongst that, I ended up on their mailing list, which lead me to Minami Deutsch. Holy shit! As far as pitch-perfect Krautrock goes, this is about as good as it gets, at least of stuff released since the 1970s. I could flap about trying to explain it, but there’s this from their bandcamp:

“Minami Deutsch was formed by Kyotaro Miula (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) in Tokyo in 2014. Their sound is influenced by both their love for Krautrock legends such as Can and Neu!, and the band members being self-professed “repetition freaks” who heavily listen to minimal techno.
The music proceeds straightforwardly with the Motorik beat (Hammer beat), devised by Klaus Dinger (Kraftwerk, Neu!), as its central axis. Humorous, yet bizarre Japanese lyrics are whispered over a hard, cold beat that is maniacally repeated, creating a pleasant ambience of electronic pulses drifting in space. Sharp guitar tones reminiscent of Michael Karoli (Can) occasionally explode into fuzz distortion, on the verge of collapse.”

Yeah! They have a record available here. I’m tempted to buy the cassette release, just for the cover of Ruckzuck available as a bonus track. Reckon it would riiip.

Ripped this riiight off The Quietus. This dude lives next to an airstrip in Scotland and makes music. It’s pretty good! Dense, groovy and a bit bizarre. He’s got a new record coming out soon, which can be backed on Kickstarter, pretty flash. The music is a bit James Ferraro, a bit Faust, a bit Swans. It’s not much like anything else, at least not without mixing a tonne of stuff together. Put it on at your next dinner party, fold your arms and start staring your guests in the eye.

UMO is back with the announcement of new record Multi-Love. It’s coming out really soon (May) on Jagjaguar. The press blurb for the title song mentions something called ‘humid longing’, which is something I’m going to have to think about for quite a long time. Anyway, the song is really good and sounds like UMO have plotted out some new ways to be psychedelic masestros, building even further on their cracking UMO-2MO record which came out in 2013. Have a listen, and if you want, follow Ruban from UMO on Twitter, it’s pretty good.

Holy shit! This song cropped up on 95bfm the other day when I was driving about to buy an iceblock. The words that came to my mind were “leeeethal” and “shazam”. Turns out the song I heard was the work of powerful French guitarsman Geoffroy Laporte. You can read more about the name of his band (it’s like an exchange student wrote it) here at Last.Fm, if you like.

The song is all driving post-punk and screamy squalls, perfect for a summertime jammer. It came out last year, but hey, these frogs can be hard to keep track of. Jessica93’s site is here.

Hookworms are from Leeds. They’re scratchy psyche blasters with krauty rhythms and a sense of fun behind the scenes, I think. I might be imagining that last bit, but they’re solid and the last two albums (2011’s S/T (on Sun Araw’s label, no less) and 2013’s Peal Mystic) are packed to the gunwales with jammers. The Impasse is a brand new one of The Hum (Out Nov 10th 2014 on Weird World Records), have a listen below. It’s pretty short, but gives you a good idea of what you’re in for. You can buy the record here: Weird World/Domino.

The 26 yr old Californian beatmaker known as Teebs is playing his 1st NZ show at Cassette 9 in Auckland this Saturday, and It’s almost certainly going to be awesome.
Teebs shares a blunted kick sound with his Brainfeeder brethren but augments it with endless layers of tinkling percussion, much of it recorded into his sampler at home. Beats are encrusted with clatters, and melodies smothered in hiss. It’s a woozy brew that’s easy to get lost in and should make for a hypnotic live show.

Well, hell. Sleep are back. Releasing this single ‘The Clarity’ for some Adult Swim singles collection (some other good stuff, and some horse shit can be found here) came as a surprise. I guess the thing with stoner metal is that its listeners startle pretty easily. Anyway, this song is great – just like the Sleep I have continually listened to for the past 6 years. I hope they pull finger and record some more!

“My ears have been screaming out for these ramen noodlies” – Carl Presant.

Credit for this find goes to Alan Holt, from the NZ Music Commission. Not really NZ music, being from a Japanese label called Guruguru Brain and all, but it’s probably just too good to be ignored. Guruguru Brain Wash is a 21 track compilation is aimed at bringing Asian psychedelia to the world, and it’s all available to stream on Bandcamp (and up for a donation enabled download). It is fucking stunning stuff – have a listen below.

Fuckin’ hell. Sleaford Mods, which I’m almost certainly pronouncing wrong, are the gruntiest thing I’ve heard for ages. Easy comparisons to The Fall come flying out of your brain when you listen along – the driving rhythms are there with a funny in-the-guts-of-England kind of accent. The lyrics are a bit less oblique but no less clever.

The album Divide and Exit (out on Bandcamp digitally and on Harbinger Sound in the real world) sounds like a scary man in a pub having a full-on meltdown about how shit everything around him has turned out – and it’s fucking brilliant.

One time I went to Australia for summer and spent the entire time drinking cask wine indoors. Josiah Birrell, or GOVS, is a bedroom producer (but I guess Moby is too, so what does that mean) from the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is the scariest coast in Australia, because its sparkling blue waters are filled with box jellyfish and guys with Macklemore haircuts pushing nerds like me into the sand. I’d stay indoors too.

Damon McMahon’s Amen Dunes are on Sacred Bones, which is more than enough of an endorsement for me. I’ve blabbed on about their last record, Through Donkey Jawbefore. They have a new record coming out next month on their aforementioned label. The track ‘Lonely Richard’ is out for a preview, it’s a decent mix of the delicate warbling I liked from their past work, with a gruntier bottomed-out bass sound chucked in.

There’s probably a really good actual reason all the trendy punks in Auckland cruised off to Melbourne in 2011, never to return. It’s probably something tragic like craft beer and cycle paths, but I’d like to think it’s to do with an enormous electromagnet under John Farnahm’s statue imploring musical talent to flock in. That city is casting shade upon all other antipodian spots, including Christchurch (which has been doing pretty well post-quake).

Anyway, ScotDrakula are making music in Melbourne and it’s shaping up mighty fine. I heard this band via Jesse & Kieran on the 95bFM Top 10 show, which is a very 2006 way of gripping new tunes, so I guess the universe aligned to do me a favour. Check out their music on Bandcamp and you can also follow them here and here.

Here’s my year end list (of 3 songs, because ehh). It’s like all the other music websites in that I’ve already written *way* too much about the list itself.

Temple Songs are Mancs. If if you ain’t a Manc, you’re a wank. This song is wonky, on the piss. The whole thing reminds me of The Intelligence, which is a major win in my book. You can grip their wares at Bandcamp.

Telegram – Follow – These trendy looking wallies from London (although surely Welsh as fuck) dropped a motorik jammer called Follow in November. While it has some chunky drums and a potent wah-laden finale, I think the best part about the whole shebang is the vocals, they’re so chirpy it’s like listening to sparrow fall into a pipe organ.

Surf City made a pretty mean record in 2013 – We Knew It Was Going To Be Like This. Bit of a mouthful. Opening track It’s a Common Life is catchy as shit albeit in a different way than Kudos which came out ages ago. You can get the album from the normal places and from Fire Records.

I mean, come on, man, Auckland’s best band Rackets and Chris Knox getting wasted by tomatoes in Hendo. This was my first post since July for a reason. Saw Rackets open for Tall Dwarfs open for Neutral Milk Hotel on 23rd Nov this year, probably one of the standout shows anyone will get to see.